Early this morning, CCP sent a memo to the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee detailing the unconstitutionality of a draft version of a campaign finance bill — H.B. 1111. After CCP’s efforts, the bill was quickly revised to address the raised constitutional problems relating to a variety of legal issues. The committee, officially known as the Senate Judiciary Committee I, is expected to consider the revised bill later today.

As North Carolina’s legislature tries its best to wrap up a month past their originally anticipated adjournment of early July, it’s our hope that North Carolina lawmakers remain mindful of the U.S. Constitution as they consider further legislation.

North Carolina’s Senate Judiciary Committee tabled consideration of a problematic campaign finance bill in advance of a hearing today after the Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) sent a legislative memo to members of the committee detailing several constitutional flaws.

The proposed bill’s attempt to conform North Carolina’s “electioneering communications” provisions to federal standards is unconstitutional and would chill the speech of North Carolina citizens.

“These provisions are an unconstitutional effort to regulate ads beyond broadcast communications,” said Stephen M. Hoersting, CCP’s Vice President and the author of the memo. “Proposed regulations for electioneering communications are now pending before the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC. Passing the bill’s proposed campaign finance restrictions before the Court decides this case will likely prompt an expensive constitutional challenge down the road.”

This research examines the structure of the Federal Election Commission in light of criticism that the agency is often unable to achieve its mission because of deadlocked votes, in which matters of law of regulation may be left unresolved. This report asks whether deadlocks are as common as popular wisdom suggests and whether deadlocks fall along party lines. It concludes that although deadlocked votes do occur, they represent a minority of the agency’s votes during the period covered under the study. The study also notes that the issues on which deadlocks occurred often features staunch disagreement among Commissioners and reflected unsettled positions on some major policy questions.

The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) urged the Michigan Supreme Court in a public letter to protect political speech rights by not linking independent speech to recusal standards.

The Michigan Supreme Court is considering new recusal standards in the wake of Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., a recent Supreme Court decision that created a vague “probability of bias standard.”

“Free speech shouldn’t be limited in campaigns for the courthouse,” said CCP Research Director Laura Renz. “If this Court creates a recusal standard based on the faulty idea that independent speech supposedly corrupts judges, the First Amendment rights of Michigan citizens will be chilled.”